Warning: The name attribute on the a
element is obsolete. Consider putting
an id attribute on the nearest
container instead.

I find that unclear. Is the "nearest container" for an anchor link the a itself, so that the correct code would be <a id='blah'> instead of <a name='blah'>? Or are empty placeholder <a> tags as a whole deprecated, and anchors can simply point to any element with an id instead?

If you need to jump users to in-page links, also known as fragment identifiers, you can set the id attribute (which is used for more than just frag ids) on any element. Then use the usual # in the URL of a href attribute of an a element. Here's an example:

<body>
<p>Despite the many
<a href="#gum-benefits">benefits</a>
you may experience while chewing gum, there are also many drawbacks,
especially with
<a href="http://www.example.org/sugar.html#cons">non-sugarless</a>
gum.</p>
...
<section id="gum-benefits">
<h1>Benefits of Gum Chewing</h1>
...
</section>
</body>

When writing my own pages, I like to give an id to each <section> tag (HTML5), even if I don't plan on using it. You can achieve the same effect by assigning ids to <h1> (etc) tags.

Lastly, empty <a> tags are not deprecated, as indicated in the HTML5 docs:

If the a element has no href attribute, then the element represents a placeholder for where a link might otherwise have been placed